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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying comeback feat after another before prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged numerous harmful stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic achievement, possibly the key turn in the series in the team's favor after appearing for much of the series like the weaker team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

When intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs quickly issued statements of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in support for families directly affected by the raids but issued no official criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous championship victory at the official residence – a decision that sports columnists described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that history and the values it represents by executives and current and former players. Several players including the coach had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

An additional complication for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to sources and its own published balance sheets, include a stake in a detention company that runs detention centers. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team pride across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the team the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Numerous fans who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its roster of international players, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his athletes but booed the executive and the top official of the investors.

"These men in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, though, goes further than only the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the story has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most influential Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They've acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Connections

Distinguishing the squad from its corporate owners is not a simple task, {